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Why do books get published on Tuesdays? I have a book coming out in June, The Boy Who Loved Math, and yes, it's June 25th, a Tuesday. I looked back to when my novel Intentions pubbed--August 14th, a Tuesday. I didn't always know this; in fact I just found it out this past year. I wish I could remember who told me. But the other day I was talking to Ziki, the man who sticks needles in me to make my back and leg pain go away. We made an appointment for the next week (tomorrow) and I told him that afterwards I would be going to a book party for my friend Marguerite's new book:
"But it's not a Tuesday," he said. I told him a book party doesn't have to be on the release date--but wait, how did he know that? He wasn't sure, he just did. He said that albums always had a day to release (he thought Fridays, and maybe it used to be so, but now it seems CDs and DVDs of movies release on Tuesdays, too).
I asked a few people, and no one seemed to know. I posted my question on twitter and got these answers:
Tradition based on coverage in Sunday papers and getting books on shelves is my understanding. I asked: Are they reviewed the Sunday before or after. The answer: Before. So that booksellers get to spend Monday explaining why people can't buy the books they just heard about. Hah.
I read all of those (you don't have to) and it still seems to me that no one knows for sure... I asked some friends who are publishers and editors: nope. They didn't know.
And so I started thinking two things:
1. In the old days, I would have called a reference librarian. My old friend from the Doylestown library (where I used to live) would have found out for me, I know that for sure. So I decided to call the New York Public Library. Oops. I waited too long. It's Presidents' Day. Library closed. But it took me almost a week to remember that I used to talk to reference librarians for this sort of thing. Yes, kids, before the Internet. I used to go to the library, go up to the desk and say, "Jan, how do I find out the answer to this question?" And sometimes Jan would just find out for me, and sometimes she would teach me how to fish. I did this for a long time, even after there was The Internet, until it became more or less part of my right hand.
2.Will this change? Whatever is the cause, will Tuesdays as pub dates change if there are more ebooks and fewer bricks and mortar bookstores? Then will people release books willy nilly? Do people who self-publish books follow the Tuesday rule?
I'm really hoping that someone will post here and tell me... Why do books publish on Tuesday? I've just spent so much time on this... as so often happens when one (me) gets stuck on a research treadmill. I just want to know the answer!
Uh oh. Wait a minute. I just looked up Marguerite's book and it officially published YESTERDAY. Which was Monday. According to Amazon. And B & N. Her publisher just says February. Okay, now I'm really confused.
7 Comments on Why Do Books Publish on Tuesdays?, last added: 2/28/2013
New movies release on DVD on Tuesday too, & when I worked at a video store that question haunted me too. As a reference librarian myself, I will commit myself to the search for a more definitive answer. Good luck in your hunt for the truth!
I hope you will find out! I'm hoping one answer will rise to the top as THE answer. Of course it does seem to be changing... hoping a publisher will weigh in about whether it will start being more fluid.
I read an article last year that said it's because of the shipping and setting up thing; if a book is released on a Monday, for example, the bookstore would be unpacking the boxes and setting the book out on its release day instead of having it already displayed on that date. I don't know why not Wednesday or another day, except that Tuesday's still early in the week.
First of all, I must point out that this is not universally the case. As I mentioned on Twitter: Only RH and Macmillan have strict Tuesday laydown dates for all titles. Other publishers like Harper and Penguin for example only have strict dates for a few select titles - generally "big" frontlist titles. Some publishers, like Scholastic for example, are the first of the month, whatever day of the week that may be. And some, like Lerner, assign a "pub date" but the real fact is, the book might show up in stores a month early, or just WHENEVER IT COMES.
So why have dates at all, and why are the dates so often Tuesday? I think it is a combo of reasons:
* For big books, they are timing media to coincide with the release week of the book.
* They want to be sure that all retailers have time to get the book in stock, received and on the shelf on the day and before said media hits and before the weekend when the most people shop.
* a laydown date helps ensure a level playing field. It's unfair if a NY bookstore has a book before a Calfornia store, or if Amazon has it for sale before physical bookstores, or whatever -- if NOBODY can sell it before that date, no one retailer will have an advantage over another (theoretically)
* Many NYT reporting stores collate their information on Monday, and can report anytime until Tuesday morning. IF you think your book has a chance of listing, you want to maximize the amount of time it is for sale that week, without the possibility of it bleeding into the week before.
just to throw a little dirt on the fire here, while the PUBLIC sees the book reviews on sunday, booksellers see those reviews as early as the wednesday before (i do at least); the book review is mailed early so we can read the reviews and order accordingly in time for them to be in the store after the review is published.
any bookseller who is ordering on a monday isn't getting that book before thursday.
books didn't always have a tuesday laydown (just as they didn't used to have prices printed on them) but these things solidified in the chains a little over a dozen years ago and may have been in part an effort to make sure they had an agreed upon target date to a national release.
but why tuesday? i think it's just one of those things that evolved. movies didn't always come out on fridays...
As you may (or may not) know, Vincent Van Gogh was an artist for only ten years. (I know, I know. Take a minute to let that sink in.) He started late for an artist--at about age 27--and died a decade later. Of course he didn't just start right away painting starry nights and work boots to knock your socks off, he first took a lot of time teaching himself to draw and then paint. He read books on drawing, he took classes and he analyzed what other artists were doing and how they were doing it. Even when he was pretty far along in his career, he kept learning, and using tools that helped him learn. One of the things he used that stopped me in my research tracks (stopped me with delight, I mean) was something called a perspective frame. Here is the Van Gogh museum's description of it, and below, a sketch of it by Vincent himself:
"During a significant part of his career Van Gogh worked using a perspective frame, a centuries-old artistic aid. The frame could be secured to one or two supports at eye level. Van Gogh would view his subject through the frame and on his blank sheet of drawing paper or canvas would sketch the lines that corresponded to the wires and edges of the wooden frame. In this way he was able to make an accurate assessment of the depth of field and the proportions of his chosen subject and to render these correctly onto a flat surface."
So two things about the perspective frame intrigue me. One is that it is a tool to learn while you are doing. What do we who are writers have that does that? More than the writing itself, I mean. (My friend Laurie says each book teaches you how to write that book.) And the second is that it is a tool that frames a scene for you, or helps you frame it, I should say, depending on where you place it. Go, stand up, and look out the closest window. That's a frame into your outside world, isn't it? If you wanted to paint that scene, the window frame (or a single pane if you have a multi-paned window) would help you put things into perspective (even without the wires) and also frame it for you in a way that would help you see it more clearly and, I think, even more beautifully.
Recently on a panel someone asked me why I decide to write something as nonfiction or fiction, as picture book or long-form narrative book. I answered that usually the project told me itself (Ok, that sounds weird, but you know what I mean) what shape it wanted to be. But that's only half the story. Once I decide on a frame, that helps me write the book. So the first frame is format and length--fiction, nonfiction, picture book, YA book, middle grade, narrative, photobiography, etc. I put my own perspective frame around it, such as in my new book, The Boy Who Loved Math. Making it a picture book ensured that I will had to carefully craft a narrative that fit into 32 (or thank you, Roaring Brook, 40) pages. That limit and the limit of the age level and the frame of a book with illustrations all went a long way into helping me shape the book. Looking through that frame every day helped me see it in a very particular way. That creates the second frame, the story I choose to tell. (With Charles and Emma, it was a love story.) Once I decide on that frame, I have to discard (almost) everything that is outside the frame. What I end up writing is from the perspective of me standing looking out my window into the world of my book. What ends up on cutting room floor is outside the frame.
It's all how you look at things. That is something my parents tried to help me see growing up. That how I looked at the world and at certain things that happened to me would guide me throughout my life. It's all in your perspective of it, they'd say. (Seems they usually said it when I was upset about something!). As I write this, Barack Obama is about to take the oath of office in front of the nation (having already done so in private the day before), and this will have a special meaning for me as a person who likes him, and a different meaning for a person who doesn't. It will probably have a very different and more heightened meaning for someone who is African American, seeing how it is taking place on Martin Luther King Day. If someone writes about that, and helps me see it from his or her perspective, that will make me very happy. (OK, I'm adding this after watching the inauguration. Wow. I couldn't stop crying. And I would like to add that writing that from the perspective of so many of the people who participated would be fascinating: a member of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir; Richard Blanco, the poet; Chuck Schumer; Lamar Alexandar; our President himself.... )
Where was I?
Back to writing: When I told one great writer friend of mine about the perspective frame, she said that we all need a little help sometimes. Yes, we do. So do children when they are learning to write (and to read). Whether it's a writing prompt or a restriction of some kind (I think restrictions really help in writing) or a genre or a format or a word list even, having a little help is an honorable thing. Hey, if it's good enough for Vincent....
But it's what we do with that help and inside that frame that matters. Here's what Vincent said about his frame in a letter to his brother Theo:
" The perpendicular and horizontal lines of the frame, together with the diagonals and the cross — or otherwise a grid of squares — provide a clear guide to some of the principal features, so that one can make a drawing with a firm hand, setting out the broad outlines and proportions. Assuming, that is, that one has a feeling for perspective and an understanding of why and how perspective appears to change the direction of lines and the size of masses and planes. Without that, the frame is little or no help, and makes your head spin when you look through it."
I love the idea of looking at your subjects through a perspective frame. We all carry one around with us. We just need to appreciate that each one will be different. THanks Deborah.
Great point, about needing the frame - a love story, an action-adventure story - and how everything comes into focus once you have it. So simple, but hard to define sometimes. I try to get projects to talk to me, but they don't always cooperate - what's the secret?
Steve, what is the secret of getting projects to talk to you? You mean inanimate objects don't talk to you? Seriously, of all people, I think you have figured out how to find the story!
So true is the knowledge We gain, log after college: There is no shame In thinking freely within a considered frame So simple And yet – it ain't This business of freedom Within constraint.
that's 'LONG' after college rubbing sleepies from me eyes from staying up late, hypnotized, watching the serious Inaugural frolic Every 4 years: a civic tonic
There's also the proscenium frame in theater, dance, opera, etc. And there's the frame of the camera lens that in some way is eerily similar to Van Gogh's. Nonfiction writers have the built-in frame called "truth."
Then again, "truth" is broad canvas. Interesting, thoughtful conversation. Thanks Deb.
A million bazillion years ago (O.K., 1998) I wrote and published a book called THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY KID'S GUIDE TO RESEARCH, re-titled in paperback THE KID'S GUIDE TO RESEARCH with the cooperation of the New York Public Library. (You can probably guess why.) I wrote the book just as this thing called the world wide web, or the internet, was becoming well, a thing. If you look at the table of contents of the book, you'll see that it was only a chapter:
I remember writing that chapter thinking, I have no idea what I am writing about, I hope it makes sense. (I had experts to help me, don't worry.) Now it seems kind of laughable that a section in chapter 5 is The Vertical File. The whole internet is, really, a vast and wonderful vertical file. But there are, of course, lots of things in the book that still apply. And the one I want to talk about today is HANDS-ON RESEARCH.
How many other writers out there do hands-on research? Raise your hands! Yes, I see you. Lots of you! How many teachers out there ask their students to do hands-on research? Yes, many of you, too! I'd love to hear from other writers what you have done recently and from teachers what you have had your students do. Please share by commenting on this post.
In that chapter I include different kinds of hands-on research. For instance if you're writing about animals, do first-hand observation! (I've been doing a lot of that since July 8 with my new dog Ketzie, although for now it's just for pleasure, not yet with a specific book in mind). I take photographs to document such observations. This is how a dog defends a stuffed-bone from her older human "brothers."
In the hands-on chapter I advise kids to cook and eat if they are doing research about a certain country or a time period. (I took my own advice a few years later when I was researching and writing my holidays around the world series). Hands-on research of course also includes conducting scientific experiments--plant a lima bean; get caterpillars and watch them turn into butterflies; make a volcano. You can also know first-hand what it was like to live long ago by doing homework by candlelight, washing on a washboard, using a morta and pestle to grind corn and making your own candles. (Or, heh heh, using books to do research.)
This past summer I have spent a lot of time working on my Vincent Van Gogh book. And a good fraction of that work time has not been writing or even researching, but painting. I am not, nor will I ever be, an artist. But I feel that to be able to write about an artist I must spend time mixing paints and playing with color and trying to capture on paper with paints things I see and feel. It is bringing me so much closer to Vincent, it's almost magical. But it's not magic. It's hands-on research and it's truly irreplaceable. Something the vast and wonderful internet cannot do. Also, IT'S SO MUCH FUN!!! This past weekend I spread out many of my paintings on our table and my husband took a picture to show you.
What you see in this photo is not someone creating great art or learning how to be a painter. What you see is an author connecting with her subject. Now when I read one of Vincent's descriptions of a painting he has seen or is working on, or read one of his letters asking Theo to send him tubes of paint, I get it, truly understand it, in a way that I never would have if I hadn't spent all this time painting. So while it may look like (and sometimes feel like) creative procrastination, it really has been deep hands-on research. (Also, if you wouldn't mind sending me tubes of ochre, Chinese white, and cobalt blue, I'd really appreciate it.)
By the way, sometimes it's just a good thing for a person to try something that she's not that good at. It's character-building and world-expanding. Take a look at my friend Robin Marantz Henig's column the other day about tap-dancing. Doesn't that make you want to do something outside your comfort zone? Come, dance with Robin, paint with me! And tell me what kind of hands-on research you've done lately!
For more on research you can go to my web site and especially this page: Research.
10 Comments on Hands-on Research, last added: 9/19/2012
The hands-on stuff really works. I've been working on a book about an attempt to steal Abraham Lincoln's body from his tomb in Springfield, and at a recent visit the ranger there led me into a not-open-to-the-public dirt-floored hallway under the monument, and handed me a chunk of white marble from Lincoln's coffin - the very one pried open by the grave robbers that night in 1876! Don't know why this helps me describe the crime scene, but it really does!
There is no way to write about science without doing hands-on research. I have performed every experiment in my books. When you do something, you get ideas. That's the basis of empirical research. Recently, I've been reading Isaac Newton's Optics. My optical engineer son, Josh, is making me a version of Newton's "crucial experiment" with prisms and lenses so I can show, first hand, how Newton's insights are not only from imagination but from hands-on experiments.
I wish on blogger I could LIKE comments. Steve, I was worried for a minute that you were going to say you had robbed a grave. And Vicki, you are the QUEEN of hands-on!! Melissa, me too. Heh.
Deb, did you see - well, you probably know all about this - a Morley Safer segment on CBS re: V. Van G.? such beauty out of such suffering. uff da http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57481909/the-life-and-death-of-vincent-van-gogh/
How about feet-on research? Whenever I do a ballet book, I try to take class, or do the warm up, with the company. It's a great way to "feel," i.e., understand the movement. Sometimes, though, it can be daunting - while doing jetes across the floor with dancers from American Ballet Theatre, I looked down and thought, "Wow, I'm actually jumping!" Then I looked up - and saw the underside of ballet shoes. Daunting! But fun. Terrific post, Deb. And the paintings are really good. I'd love to hear more research stories - both up in the air and down on the ground.
Cheryl, That's based on this new van Gogh bio that I have big reservations about. But I did stop painting long enough to watch it. :) I am, as always, a skeptical researcher.
My latest hands-on (or, as Susan more accurately said, feet-on) research was for my work-in-progress, a biography of Emerson.
I didn't truly understand why he felt so hemmed in by the streets of Boston (and why that fueled his love of nature) until I walked the streets of Beacon Hill last fall.
The adult in me loved the beautiful architecture and felt so grateful that the buildings were still there for us to enjoy. But the KID in me thought, sheesh, even at noon, the buildings are so close together that they block the sun. And emerging onto Boston Common, the kid in me wanted to run run run!
CandaceFleming, author of Amelia Lost, and many other great books calls it the “vital idea.”
I’ve heard other nonfiction writers use terms like inciting incident, emotional trigger, creative spark, moment of inception, central mantra. I like to call it the creative core.
What is it?
It’s the heart of a great nonfiction manuscript.
It’s what a specific author brings to a topic, to a manuscript that no one else can.
It’s why a topic chooses an author, not the other way around.
It’s the result of an aha moment, and the source of passionate writing.
It’s what connects a topic, any topic, to a universal theme that everyone can relate to.
And according to nonfiction author Heather Montgomery, it’s what makes the best nonfiction books timeless.
Sound like magic? Well, it kind of is.
A nonfiction book’s creative core originates deep inside its author. Maybe it traces back to a powerful childhood memory. It might be the result of a deep-seeded desire, hope, belief, or disappointment. Here are some examples.
Tanya Lee Stone wrote Sandy’s Circusbecause, as a child, Alexander Calder, was the only artist she immediately understood in a way that her father and sister seemed to understand all artists. Calder was her link to a secret knowledge that made her feel more closely connected to her family.
DeborahHeiligman’s “nonfiction novel” Charles & Emma is so compelling because everything about who she is as a person drove her to write a book “in service to the love story” between Darwin and his wife. It's a book that only she could write.
Next year, I have a book coming out that traces back to the walks my father, brother, and I took through the woods near our home when I was young. The knowledge my brother and I learned on those meandering journeys and the closeness it made us feel to my father had a strong impact on both our lives. In many ways, I’ve been writing No Monkeys, No Chocolate since I was 8 years old.
How can a writer go about identifying the creative core of a work in progress? He or she must think deeply and ask questions that may have difficult or uncomfortable answers:
--What really prompted the writer to choose his or her topic. Was there an event--an inciting incident?
--Is there a connection to the writer's own life that needs to be examined?
--Does the author need to acknowledge a disappointment or betrayal in order to move on? --Was there an aha moment filled with joy that the author can't wait to share?
Journaling can be an invaluable tool during this process. Writing about the moment of inception can help writers stay connected to it and the emotions it triggers.
Whether fiction or nonfiction, the best writing comes from a place of vulnerability. We write because we have something we need to say.
6 Comments on The Creative Core, last added: 9/25/2012
Melissa, This is a great post, and it gets to the heart, I think, of what we are all trying to do--and that is write books that mean so much to us we can't help but convey that to our readers. I love that you say you've been writing No Monkeys, No Chocolate (GREAT title!) since you were 8. What is the pub date?
Thanks, Deb. No Monkeys, No Chocolate is coming out in Fall 2013. I'm reviewing some of the final art now, which (finally) makes the book really seem alive to me.
This is a wonderful post. We teachers are trying to help children understand that it is an author's personal take on a topic that makes writing so original and compelling. Thank you for the inside scoop.
Great post, Melissa. But I think that good writers also look for a way to own a subject that has been suggested by an editor (in the interest of making a living.) Good writers don't like to be plugged into a series with a formula. Too much of this kind of writing stifles the spark in an author that connects a subject to a reader
I love this post, Melissa. Only after I finally "got" this did I really start feeling successful as a nonfiction writer, plus it makes writing a lot more interesting and fun! Now, this is where I always start with a new project, and it's what I go back to whenever I'm feeling stuck. So powerful and true!
Vicki, that's an interesting point. When I'm assigned a topic, I approach the book differently. The fun is putting the pieces together in a way that will be interesting and relevant to young readers.
The kind of writing I'm addressing in my post is different, at least for me. It's more about discovering that there is a puzzle and figuring out its attributes. What shape is it? Is it 2-D or 3-D or maybe even 4-D.
I had a different post written. About ethics in nonfiction. I'd like to publish that post some day. I'm sure I will. But not today. Because as much as we debate and discuss what is the best way for our children to learn, the best way for us to write for children, what constitutes nonfiction, how angry it makes me when people play fast and loose with the facts, all of that is moot if unstable people are able to have easy access to guns. What good is it to create books for children, to teach them, to care so much, if people in power are too cowardly and bull-headed, too self-interested about their own political futures and too caught up in rhetoric, to legislate wisely to protect children? To protect all of us? I don't have the words to talk about the calamity in Newtown, CT, in a way that will make the (mostly) men in power change the laws in this country. I don't have the perfect way of describing how angry I feel about the fact that it is really difficult for many mentally ill people to get good treatment and really easy for people in most states in our nation to get guns. Guns not for hunting, or killing the odd rabid raccoon on your land, but guns for murdering people. People I've been writing with and talking with since Friday understand legislation better than I do. They understand guns and gun laws and gerrymandering and all the reasons why there is more regulation in automobile safety (which is of course a good thing to have) than in the purchase of guns. They understand that in some states it takes a month to get a gun while in a neighboring state you can walk into Walmart and buy one. (I really like what Nicholas Kristoff had to say the other day in "Do We Have the Courage To Stop This?") There is no reason why there should be so many guns in this country--250,000,000 plus. There is no reason why there are so many guns that are easily concealable. Guns that you don't have to reload so you can murder people in movie theaters and children coloring at their first-grade tables. There is no reason. Don't give me the right to bear arms. Don't give me the argument that you want to defend yourself. A gun in your home is more likely to kill you or someone you love than an intruder. Don't give me that. Give me a country like most of the other civilized countries in the world where people recognize that guns kill innocent people. Give me a country where we put health and safety first, where we put love first, where we put children first. (I really like what Gail Collins had to say about finding the best in our country again in "Looking for America." ) I did a school visit in Newtown, CT, in April, 2010. Not at Sandy Hook, but at the Catholic school a mile and a half away, St. Rose of Lima. It was a good day, really nice people, though there were a couple of snafus (on my part), funny things that happened that I liked to tell people about afterwards. Now all I can think about is those kids I met, their lovely parents and teachers, and how they've been touched by unspeakable tragedy. So many people I know are one degree away from this tragedy. But aren't we all? There's a Mr. Rogers quote that's been making the rounds. Have you seen it? Here it is, from this site, in case you haven't: "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world."
Let's be those helpers, folks. Let's demand better gun legislation. Let's demand that it be REALLY HARD to get access to guns. Let's demand that the kinds of guns that are created only to murder people are BANNED. Let's demand EASY access to health care, including mental health care. Let's talk about other ways that we can make our country safe for children, for all of us. Let's work together to tell the grown-ups what children already know: guns are bad. And: grown-ups are supposed to protect children. Are supposed to be ABLE to protect children. Let's be those people that children look at and say, Those are the helpers. Those are the caring people in the world.
If not now, when?
12 Comments on If Not Now, When?, last added: 12/18/2012
Here, here. One thing I think we can all easily do is to sign the petitions circulating the Internet to our local reps and to the White House. I find this kind of citizen generated politics encouraging. Pols do pay attention to these, although we all know it's very hard to drown out the voice of the gun lobby.
Amen, and amen, Deborah. I'm doing a school visit at an elementary school near Baltimore this afternoon, and I pray for the strength to hold myself together as I look out on the all beautiful young faces today. Earlier this morning I wrote both of my U.S. senators (from Virginia) urging them to support tough gun control legislation, including banning assault weapons, restricting gun show and internet sales, limiting magazine size and ammunition purchases, and requiring more reliable background checks. Let's all do this, let's make our voices louder than the NRA and the gun manufacturers they represent. Let's be helpers.
Deborah, thanks for voicing what so many of us think and feel about this tragedy. Now is the time to act - this isn't a problem that is going to go away like the NRA thinks it will with the passage of time, and we must make politicians listen to us.
Thanks for coming out and saying what so many people are feeling. How can gun enthusiasts put their own perverted pleasure above the safety of their fellow man, woman and child? I want a ban on guns that are designed to kill humans. We should all want that.
Last night I spoke with the teachers in my graduate class about how they and their students are dealing with this tragedy. Heartfelt stories came pouring out about dealing with children's questions and even lack of knowledge about what happened. While teachers felt supported by their principals, it became evident that there were many different messages and procedures being followed. Many parents, it seems, kept their children home yesterday. We have never felt this anxious in schools. As a teacher reminded me, our students are growing up in a world of violence. I am worried.
Yes, please sign petitions, call, and write individual congress people. I also think it is time to march - in every city, town, and hamlet. We need huge bodies of people marching in protest of what I consider a misinterpretation of the Second Amendment. March the way we did for civil rights, for women's rights, and the against the Vietnam war. The time is now.
Very well-said, but I have to respectfully disagree with that focus. I articulated it on my blog: http://www.inhabitingbooks.com/2012/12/the-newtown-massacre-are-we-focusing-on.html
great points beautifully made! and love the advice of Mr. Roger's mom- no wonder he turned into such a lovely man with a mom like that- thanks for sharing it!
Make a beeline for your local library’s children’s biography section and learn firsthand the shocking truth about picture book bios of mathematical geniuses. Apparently there was only one and his name was Einstein. End of story. The world as we know it is not overflowing with picture book encapsulations of the lives of Sir Isaac Newton or Archimedes (though admittedly you could probably drum up a Leonardo da Vinci book or two if you were keen to try). But when it comes to folks alive in the 20th century, Einstein is the beginning and the end of the story. You might be so foolish as to think there was a good reason for that fact. Maybe all the other mathematicians were dull. I mean, Einstein was a pretty interesting fella, what with his world-shattering theories and crazed mane. And true, the wild-haired physicist was fascinating in his own right, but if we’re talking out-and-out interesting people, few can compare with the patron saint of contemporary mathematics, Paul Erdős. Prior to reading this book I would have doubted a person could conceivably make an engaging biography chock full to overflowing with mathematical concepts. Now I can only stare in amazement at a story that could conceivably make a kid wonder about how neat everything from Euler’s map of Konigsburg to the Szekeres Snark is. This is one bio you do NOT want to miss. A stunner from start to finish.
For you see, there once was a boy who loved math. His name was Paul and he lived in Budapest, Hungary in 1913. As a child, Paul adored numbers, and theorems, and patterns, and tricky ideas like prime numbers. As he got older he grew to be the kind of guy who wanted to do math all the time! Paul was a great guy and a genius and folks loved having him over, but he was utterly incapable of taking care of himself. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Folks would take care of Paul and in exchange he would bring mathematicians together. The result of these meetings was great strides in number theory, combinatorics, the probabilistic method, set theory, and more! Until the end of this days (when he died in a math meeting) Paul loved what he did and he loved the people he worked with. “Numbers and people were his best friends. Paul Erdős had no problem with that.”
There are two kinds of picture book biographies in this world. The first attempts to select just a single moment or personality quirk from a person’s life, letting it stand in as an example of the whole. Good examples of this kind of book might include Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell about the childhood of Jane Goodall or Lincoln Tells a Joke: How Laughter Saved the President And the Country by Kathleen Krull. It’s hard to pinpoint the perfect way to convey any subject, but it can sometimes be even harder to tell an entire life in the span of a mere 40 pages or so. Still, that tends to be the second and more common kind of picture book biography out there. Generally speaking they don’t tend to be terribly interesting. Just a series of rote facts, incapable of making it clear to a kind why a person mattered aside from the standard “because I said so” defense. The Boy Who Loved Math is different because it really takes the nature of biography seriously. If the purpose of a bio is to make it clear that a person was important, how important was a guy who loved math puzzles? Well, consider what the story can do. In a scant number of pages author Deborah Heiligman gives us an entire life synthesized down to just a couple key moments, giving the man’s life form and function and purpose, all while remaining lighthearted and fun to read. Who does that?
Did you know that there are kids out there who like math? I mean, reeeeeeally like math? The kinds that beg their parents for math problems to solve? They exist (heck, Ms. Heiligman gave birth to one) and for those kids this book will come like a present from on high. Because not only does the author highlight a fellow who took his passion for numbers and turned it into a fulfilling and fun life, but thanks to illustrator LeUyen Pham the illustrations are overflowing with math equations and puzzles and problems, just waiting to be interpreted and dissected. I have followed the career of Ms. Pham for many years. There is no book that she touches that she does not improve with her unique style. Whether it’s zeroing in on a child’s neuroses in Alvin Ho or bringing lush life to a work of poetry as in A Stick Is an Excellent Thing, Pham’s art can run the gamut from perfect interstitial pen-and-inks to lush watercolor paints. I say that, but I have never, but ever, seen anything like what she’s done in The Boy Who Loved Math.
It would not be overstating the matter to call this book Pham’s masterpiece. The common story behind its creation is that there was some difficulty finding the perfect artist for it because whosoever put pen to paper here would have to be comfortable on some level with incorporating math into the art. Many is the artist who would shy away from that demand. Not Ms. Pham. She takes to the medium like a duck to water, seemingly effortlessly weaving equations, charts, diagrams, numbers, and theorems into pictures that also have to complement the story, feature the faces of real people, capture a sense of time (often through clothing) and place (often through architecture), and hardest of all, be fun to look at.
But that’s just for starters. The final product is MUCH more complex. I’m not entirely certain what the medium is at work here but if I had to guess I’d go with watercolors. Whatever it is, Pham’s design on each page layout is extraordinary. Sometimes she’ll do a full page, border to border, chock full of illustrations of a single moment. That might pair with a page of interstitial scenes, giving a feel to Paul’s life. Or consider the page where you see a group of diners at a restaurant, their worlds carefully separated into dotted squares (a hat tip to one of Paul’s puzzles) while Paul sits in his very own dotted pentagon. It’s these little touches that make it clear that Paul isn’t like other folks. All this culminates in Pham’s remarkable Erdős number graph, where she outdoes herself showing how Paul intersected with the great mathematicians of the day. Absolutely stunning.
Both Heiligman and Pham take a great deal of care to tell this tale as honestly as possible. The extensive “Note From the Author” and “Note From the Illustrator” sections in the back are an eye-opening glimpse into what it takes to present a person honestly to a child audience. In Pham’s notes she concedes when she had to illustrate without a guide at hand. For example, Paul’s babysitter (“the dreaded Faulein”) had to be conjured from scratch. She is the rare exception, however. Almost every face in this book is a real person, and it’s remarkable to look and see Pham’s page by page notes on who each one is.
Heiligman’s author’s note speaks less to what she included and more to what she had to leave out. She doesn’t mention the fact that Paul was addicted to amphetamines and honestly that sort of detail wouldn’t have served the story much at all. Similarly I had no problem with Paul’s father’s absence. Heiligman mentions in her note what the man went through and why his absences would make Paul’s mother the “central person in his life emotionally”. The book never denies his existence, it just focuses on Paul’s mother as a guiding force that was perhaps in some way responsible for the man’s more quirky qualities. The only part of the book that I would have changed wasn’t what Heiligman left out but what she put in. At one point the story is in the midst of telling some of Paul’s more peculiar acts as a guest (stabbing tomato juice cartons with knives, waking friends up at 4 a.m. to talk math, etc.). Then, out of the blue, we see a very brief mention of Paul getting caught by the police when he tried to look at a radio tower. That section is almost immediately forgotten when the text jumps back to Paul and his hosts, asking why they put up with his oddities. I can see why placing Paul in the midst of the Red Scare puts the tale into context, but I might argue that there’s no real reason to include it. Though the Note for the Author at the end mentions that because of this act he wasn’t allowed back in the States for a decade, it doesn’t have a real bearing on the thrust of the book. As they say in the biz, it comes right out.
I have mentioned that this book is a boon for the math-lovers of the world, but what about the kids who couldn’t care diddly over squat about mathy malarkey? Well, as far as I’m concerned the whole reason this book works is because it’s fun. A little bit silly too, come to that. Even if a kid couldn’t care less about prime numbers, there’s interest to be had in watching someone else get excited about them. We don’t read biographies of people exactly like ourselves all the time, because what would be the point of that? Part of the reason biographies even exist is to grant us glimpses into the lives of the folks we would otherwise never have the chance to meet. Your kid may never become a mathematician, but with the book they can at least hang out with one.
One problem teachers have when they teach math is that they cannot come up with a way to make it clear that for some people mathematics is a game. A wonderful game full of surprises and puzzles and queries. What The Boy Who Loved Math does so well is to not only show how much fun math can be on your own, it makes it clear that the contribution Paul Erdős gave to the world above and beyond his own genius was that he encouraged people to work together to solve their problems. Heiligman’s biography isn’t simply the rote facts about a man’s life. It places that life in context, gives meaning to what he did, and makes it clear that above and beyond his eccentricities (which admittedly make for wonderful picture book bio fare) this was a guy who made the world a better place through mathematics. What’s more, he lived his life exactly the way he wanted to. How many of us can say as much? So applause for Heiligman and Pham for not only presenting a little known life for all the world to see, but for giving that life such a magnificent package as this book. A must purchase.
On shelves June 25th
Source: Advanced readers galley sent from publisher for review.
I love picture book biographies but sometimes my kids don’t like them as much as I do. I think this one will be a hit!
Jean said, on 1/21/2013 9:51:00 AM
I just did a math bibliography for my teachers and the only biographies I could come up with were Carry on, Mr. Bowditch and The librarian who measured the earth. I’ll order this one for next year.
Greg Pincus said, on 1/21/2013 10:35:00 AM
Can’t wait to get this. And I must add to your list of math bios – Blockhead: the Life of Fibonacci by Joseph D’Agnese. One could make a case for Starry Messenger by Peter Sis, too, though like DaVinci, it’s not a hidden math personality being brought to life….
Elizabeth Bird said, on 1/21/2013 10:38:00 AM
I did consider Starry Messenger, but wasn’t sure where to slot it in. Blockhead is an excellent choice. Forgot that one.
It’s the recent fellers (and gals) that still tend to be rarest. If anyone can come up with some 20th century names I’d be grateful. After all, how many kids say, “When I grow up I want DaVinci’s job!”
Meghan m. said, on 1/21/2013 10:42:00 AM
Do people really LIKE math? I”m just kidding. I know there are people who do… out there…somewhere.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 1/21/2013 10:58:00 AM
I know. To an English major it’s like saying to a junk food lover that someone else likes kale. You respect their opinion but you can’t help wondering what they’re seeing in it that you’re not.
*shudder* Kale.
Greg Pincus said, on 1/21/2013 11:23:00 AM
I think this speaks to your question about 20th century names, too, though. These biographies are not about math – they are about people. I mean, look at the book Longitude by Dava Sobel. You don’t need to ever have asked “I wonder about the history of longitude” or have any interest in science to like it. Most of us, I dare say, would never had thought to ask about that history or heard of the name(s) behind it. Keeping the conversation on interesting people and stories (well told, at that) makes it easier for others to pitch worthwhile bios rather than thinking “well, no one is gonna be interested in xxxxxxxxxx.”
Lisa said, on 1/21/2013 3:52:00 PM
With the local schools in the midst of the annual biography assignment, and the hard push towards nonfiction to satisfy the CCS, I appreciate a new title to offer. Now if only more teachers would accept picture book biographies for their older students. (sigh)
Elizabeth Bird said, on 1/21/2013 5:16:00 PM
Show them the backmatter for this book. If the kids are required to read that portion then it should more than satisfy teachers of 4th and 5th graders. Heck, teens would get a kick out of it.
This is my post from January of 2011. It got a lot of comments because it hit a nerve. We are in this business, all of us, to help children, and to help ALL children. So even though most teachers and school librarians are taking a well-deserved vacation right now, and writers are taking off here and there (next month we're going to the Galapagos to revisit those gorgeous islands, and to speak), our hearts never take a vacation, do they? Speaking of hearts, knock wood, no more problems with that organ here. See you in the fall!
When I was thinking about what I would write for this post, after a month filled with family medical stuff, which included intense nerve pain for a month (me); a middle of the night dramatic collapse (husband) followed by 34 hours in a NYC Emergency Room (if only I wrote for grown-ups I'd have enough material for the rest of my life just from the set of rotating characters in the bed next to us), I decided I would take the easy way out and ask some teacher friends of mine to give me a list of books they wish someone would write.
[By the way, so you pay attention to the rest of my post and don't worry too much about us, as I write this, my husband is walking around the apartment strapped to a portable heart monitor, which I've named Halle Berry so he doesn't hate it so much, and which I am convinced will show as that his AFib was not a common occurrence; and my pain has, in the first words of ?John Stuart Mill? (someone else?), somewhat abated. I have every reason to believe we both are going to be o.k., though I must say the most commonly used word around our place lately is "vulnerable"...]
Anyway, thinking I'd let some t
1 Comments on A Teacher's Wish List, last added: 7/19/2011
In 1999, when we were all worried that Y2K was going to wreck the world as we knew it, maybe even blow it up, my family went to the Galapagos. My husband, who had written a book called The Beak of the Finch, about scientists Rosemary and Peter Grant studying Darwin's finches in the Galapagos, was invited to go on two back-to-back one week trips (on Lindblad Expeditions) and give some talks. He was allowed to bring our family along. Our sons were then 14 and almost 11. We all went for two weeks--Christmas week into New Year's week. If the world blew up, we'd be on the equator, in the Galapagos. What a way to go.
It was a magical trip. Our older son, in true teenager style, said to his father while walking on a gorgeous beach New Year's day, 2000, "Well Dad, short of taking us to the moon, this was the most amazing thing you could have done for us."
Writers are mostly poor. I don't know if you realize that. Especially if one writer is not married to, say, an investment banker. We two independent writers brought up our sons often wondering if we were going to be able to keep the show going. Some days (what am I saying?, some months, some years), I would go to the grocery store and panic--how was I going to buy pasta, cereal, laundry detergent, and still pay the electric bill? And then came the Pulitzer Prize, with all its shine. And still not a lot of money. We worked very hard, both of us, and loved our jobs, but.... not a lot of money, not a budget for luxuries like expensive family trips. But then. The Galapagos. Every once in a while, we were thrown a plum, and that trip to the Galapagos was a whole bushel of plums every day for two weeks. That bushel of plums lasted for years afterwards--unlike real plums. Someone once said, spend your money on experiences because experiences last longer than things. Let me chime in and say: YES! Because in our case it was really true.
When Jon was asked again to go to the Galapagos and yes, he could bring the family, I didn't know how the boys--now young men--would react. Could they commit, a year in advance, to spending two weeks with their parents? Would they even want to? Jon barely got the sentence out of his mouth. They each said YES without thinking about it. The Galapagos is that amazing a place.
So we went this past summer, again for two weeks. An added bonus was that I was also asked to speak, about Charles and Emma. To tell that story while on a ship in the Galapagos was pure joy. And going back with our now-grown sons (25 and 22) was also pure joy. It was epic and monumental and perhaps the most beautiful thing in the wor
7 Comments on The Trips of a Lifetime, last added: 10/18/2011
Thank you, Deb, for sharing this wonderful trip. Writers are mostly poor, but we do get thrown plums now and then. Sometimes, we have to reach up and pick them for ourselves. We did that this summer, and the sweetness of those plum-filled days still feed us. The Galapagos has made the list of places to go!
Thanks! A friend just wrote me an email saying, it's octopuses, not octopi. In fact, it's either, and there's also a third: octopodes. I found this great link, and since I know we're all word geeks here, I thought I'd share it. An editor at Merriam-Webster explaining it all:
Barbara, you took the words right out of my mouth. There's more than one way to be rich. I just spent the better part of an hour clicking on Deb's links, where you can "meet" some of her amazing friends (I especially liked Peter and Rosemary Grant)and listen to Jonathan talk about the people he interviewed while writing his 2010 book, which sounds great. I loved this post, partly because going to the Galapagos was such a life-altering experience for me too. But aside from all that, a life well led is worth its weight in gold.
Beautiful, wonderful post Deb. I'm so glad you included how important it is to travel as a family. These are memories your boys will have forever. The pix are pretty awesome, too.
Beautiful, wonderful post Deb. I'm so glad you included how important it is to travel as a family. These are memories your boys will have forever. The pix are pretty awesome, too.
If it were up to me, you'd listen to this song while reading this post.
So. It's been a very, very long time since I broke up with a sweetheart, given that I've been married for almost 30 years. (In my culture, you get married at 11.) And I don't intend to ever break up with him. But there comes a time in every writer's life when she has to break up with a topic. Actually, many times. Usually the break-up comes early on in the project. At least for me. I work on something for a short time and realize that there's just no there there, or that it's not for me. Or someone or something else pulls at me, grabs my attention. ("Oh you over there, come hither...")
But sometimes, it seems, you go out with someone for a very long time before you realize he or she was not your bashert. This has just happened to me. It was a long relationship, but it was going nowhere. It just took me a very long time to realize that because I thought... I was sure...though I had niggling doubts...that I was in love.
But breaking up really IS hard to do.
(By the way, I also like this version of the song. My friend Judy Blundell votes for the slow version, which I also like. Ok, maybe I'm spending too much time listening to Neil Sedaka.)
I mean, look at her. An early NYC policewoman. A detective. And we had spent so many, many months together.
The more time, energy, money, time, time, time, you invest in a topic, the more reluctant you are to let it go. I bought and read very many books.
I spent many hours looking for people who knew the person I had fallen in love with. After much detective work, I found her descendants. That was a great day! And then her great granddaughter became an enthusiastic helper, inviting me to come to her house, where I combed through boxes of clippings, notes, photos, memorabilia, and even recordings, hoping for the big break in the case.
I dug deep into the web, into online newspapers, books, footnotes of journal articles. I reached out to authors, researchers, professors, librarians... But I just couldn't get e
18 Comments on Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, last added: 11/17/2011
My heart is in my throat reading this. It's good to be right and brave, but of course -- there's grief and stumbling, and maybe the heartbreak is even worse because nothing wrong with you and nothing wrong with the subject but together you just weren't meant to be. So glad you're finding a new love elsewhere.
I know how hard this has been for you and still hold out hope that she will return in another form when you least expect it. In the meantime, I am very excited about your next project!
Loved the links. Loved the post. You may or may not end up doing a book on MS one day, but the reading and thinking you've done on the project will enhance future books. Time well spent.
Wow. I'm all sad and weepy on your behalf but am so glad you've found Mr. Right to help you move forward. The thing is, you did EVERYTHING you possible could to make the earlier relationship work.
Thank you, everyone, for being right there with me on this. You've mourned with me, and encouraged me on my new project. Children's book people really are the best! I got a wonderful email from MS's great granddaughter. She quoted Winston Churchill, “Never, never, never, never give up!”And we are raising a glass to her great grandmother tonight.
I agree with those who said that somehow what you learned doing this research, or some aspect of the story, will come back to you in an unexpected way. But still, I feel your pain. I've had breakups like that, though perhaps not quite as intense...
Experiencing sympathetic chest pain over your plight on this. You are brave to break up and clear the decks. So many topics pursued that did not pan out are swimming in my computer hard drive, like persistent fish. Your immersion in this one makes it so intriguing, so deep, so hard. Thanks for sharing this part of the process with us.
It is so hard to give up on a topic you've spent so much time with--especially it's a person to whom you feel you owe something. I have my own love story bio. I haven't given up on him yet. But each time I leave him now to move on to other books, it's longer and longer before I get back to him. Sad.
Hi, Deb, I'm glad you found Mr. Right, but pigeon poop doesn't faze me, so whenever you're ready to get her back, call me. Peggy www.peggythomaswrites.com anatomyofnonfiction@blogspot.com
Oh, dear. This is exactly what I didn't want to hear right now, as I'm struggling with a similar situation. I haven't broken up yet, but it isn't looking good.
A wonderful read in itself! Somehow, sometime your research time will pay off. (Or at lest that's what i tell myself about my infatuation with the Maasai.)
Fantastic post Deb! I'm so sorry it didn't work out for you, but thank you for sharing the experience. Plus - Vincent sounds fascinating - just visited his museum myself in Sept.
I can't imagine anyone has any time right now to read a long blog post. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to share with you some wonderful pieces I've read lately. Most of them are on a theme--nonfiction storytelling. I hope you take a minute or two between shopping, cooking, last-minute writing deadlines, last-minute paper-grading, etc., to sit down and treat yourself.
First, here is a lovely piece by Henning Mankell, whose books about the Swedish detective Kurt Wallander I love. It's called THE ART OF LISTENING. I adored this piece and if I could wrap it up and put it in a box and deliver it to each and every one of you I would. Well, maybe I just did.
Next is a piece that was in Friday's New York Times that might not have made it to other parts of the country. It's about a theater group that pairs teenagers with people over 60. It's inspiring for nonfiction writers and lovers, and a great idea for other communities. Sort of a twist on StoryCorps (always a good place to visit!). This one is called TRUSTING SOMEONE OVER 60. (Don't let the headline deter you.)
Another piece that walloped me from the Times was this one, WHAT WASN'T PASSED ON. I won't say anything more about it so you can experience it for yourself.
Last week Jim Murphy wrote a great post about Recharging Batteries, and I referred in the comments to an article about the novelist Richard Ford that I loved. Read both when you can!
And because I can't help myself, I'm leaving you with my potato latke recipe. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and here's to a wonderful New Year -- 2012. That number seems like science fiction.
2 Comments on A Few Treats From Me To You, last added: 12/20/2011
Thank you Deb, for this wonderful gift! I instantly clicked on the links and read the stories.
Lately, I've been reading the NY Times in a rather desultory way on my iPad. You've just shown me how much I've missed since I stopped reading the broadsheet.
I'm even going to peruse your latke recipe although I have some in the freezer that are a LOT less work. Happy Hannukah!
Your post is a great holiday gift, Deb. And I agree with Ford about taking a break from writing, which is why I try to never write on weekends. Getting away provides perspective on past work.
Recently others on I.N.K. have been talking about visual learners and visual learning. Coincidentally I've been thinking about pictures a lot lately, too. And I am NOT a visual learner. I am the kid who skipped the pictures. I am the kid who did not like comic books because there were too many pictures and not enough words. It's not that I don't like pictures. I love looking at photographs and paintings. In a museum. Or on someone's wall. But when I want to know something, when I want to learn, I need words.
But just as writing is all about revision (that's one way to look at it), life is all about change that leads to growth. For a few months now I've been wondering why I've had this block about visual learning, and if maybe I shouldn't try to change it. Just as when I took up squash a few years ago, I am playing to my weak suit. (Bad eye-hand coordination, impatience with the work it takes me to understand visual details.) But I am really loving the challenge and it is leading to new vistas for me. (Intended.)
Many things have contributed to this new path of mine.
First of all, I seem to be writing a book about a painter. I spend hours reading Vincent Van Gogh's letters and although I'm reading more for hints as to who he was, and how important his personal relationships were, I can't help but read his many sentences about light and color and figure-drawing and composition. He was one of the greatest artists of all time, after all. And over these last months, I've been reading sentences such as
"...it was in the evening, and the sunset threw a ruddy glowon the gray evening clouds, against which the masts of the ships and the row ofold houses and trees stood out; and everything was reflected in the water, andthe sky threw a strange light on the black earth, on the green grass withdaisies and buttercups, and on the bushes of white and purple lilacs, and onthe elderberry bushes of the garden in the yard."
How can I help but learn from him? How can I help but start to see the world in a different way? How can I help but see paintings and photographs and all art in a different way?
Second: My husband has gotten back into photography after decades away from it. He is learning digital photography, and sharing his enthusiasms with me. We've always loved to look at photographs together, but now we talk not only about beauty in photographs, but how photographs can tell stories, impart information, and add dimensions to nonfiction.
Third: I recently heard David Wiesner talk. I was enthralled by what he had to say about his process. Much of the art technicalities went over my head, but his attention to detail, the drafts, the experimentation, all of that is very similar to my process as a writer. So I was able to understand the creation of art in a way that I never have before. After hearing him talk I bought Flotsam and Sector 7 (sorry for talking about fiction here on I.N.K., but it relates!) and my husband and I sat on the couch and read them togethe
5 Comments on The Art of Nonfiction, last added: 2/24/2012
Wow Deborah! There are so many levels to this post I’ll only respond to a few. I was the kid who loved images, comic books, and ballet - only came to those odd squiggles called words latish in childhood. So it touches and inspires me to see [intended] “a needer of words” grow while writing a book about a great artist.
You’re a very fast learner because you obviously gave your illustrator the respect and creative space that will enhance the Paul Erdos book. Beautiful spreads. Can’t wait to see it in its entirety.
Share a picture book with a loved one tonight. What can be more romantic!
Thanks for your insights, Deborah. One of the thinsg I love about this blog is how we can all help each other grow in new directions and think about the world in different ways.
One of my dearest and oldest friends is Alan Alda.
Alan Alda, My Friend
Of course he doesn't know that, but don't we all feel that way about him? I grew up watching M*A*S*H. I just know he's a great guy. I saw him eating lunch a couple of years ago in one of my neighborhood restaurants, like a regular person, so that alone proves it. I went to a staged reading of a play he wrote about Marie Curie. The play, Radiance, had a lot going for it, most of all his passion for the subject, which he talks about here, in an essay for the Huffington Post called "In Love with Marie." The essay is worth reading not only for the subject matter but also because it is how so many of us non-fiction writers feel about the people (and subjects) we are writing about.
I am not alone in Alda love. I know this. My friend Rebecca used to drag her mother to the inferior Chinese restaurant in their neighborhood because Alan Alda ate there. His photo was in the window. Of course she did. What are so-so cold sesame noodles compared to Alan Hawkeye Alda? And I adore great cold sesame noodles.
I would like to say to Alan, as William Thacker's sister, Honey, says to movie star Anna Scott in Notting Hill, "I genuinely believe and have believed for some time now that we can be best friends. What do YOU think?"
(I also believe that I could be best friends with Julia Roberts, but maybe that's because I've watched Notting Hill 1,424 times.)
Also, as long as I'm off on a tangent, my favorite M*A*S*H episode was the heartbreaking one with Blythe Danner called "The More I See You." (I looked it up. Tried to embed video. Couldn't find any. Had to order it from Netflix. This blog post is taking many, many, many pomodoros.)
Where was I? Yes, Alan Alda. Here's the latest reason to be smitten with him. He is the cofounder of The Center for Communicating Science at Stonybrook. And he has recently issued THE FLAME CHALLENGE.
Here's Alan explaining it in SCIENCE Magazine:
"I WAS 11 AND I WAS CURIOUS. I HAD BEEN THINKING FORDAYS ABOUT THE FLAME AT THE END of a candle. Finally, I took the problem to myteacher. “What’s a flame?” I asked her. “What’s going on in there?” There was aslight pause and she said, “It’s oxidation.” She didn’t seem to think there wasmuch else to say. Deflated, I knew there had to be more to the mystery of a flamethan just giving the mystery another name. That was a discouraging moment forme personally, but decades later I see the failure to communicate science withclarity as far more serious for society. We feel the disconnect all around us,from a common misimpression that evolution is the theory that we’re descendedfrom monkeys, to the worry that physicists in Geneva might suck the universeinto a teacup—or something uncomfortably smaller...."<
3 Comments on In Love with Alan Alda, last added: 3/20/2012
So I always knew that Alan Alda was smart and funny and lovable, but the flame challenge proves that he's up there with my hero, Einstein, and the theory of everything.
I remember being told as a child that I asked to many questions, and finally along comes Alan Alda.
When I learned that Alan Alda would be speaking at Chautaqua as part of their writer's Series I was so disappointed. Alan Alda, really? While I loved him in Mash I couldn't help thinking, Why couldn't they get a real writer rather than just another actor/ celeb... I reluctantly bought his memoir on audio to listen to on the car ride up to Chautaqua. For the next hour my husband, Joe, and I were nodding our heads, near tears, smiling, and laughing. Because guess what? Alan Alda can write! And once there we also learned that not only can he speak to a group of people there to hear writers, but he was probably one of the most entertaining and interesting speakers that Chautaqua has ever had. He's got such a quick and lively mind to go along with that great comic timing. Needless to say he got a standing ovation. And the first to stand up was me! So yes, Deb, your blog is right on. Alan Alda, what's not to love?
Thanks for this alert, Deborah. I, like Alan Alda, have made Marie Curie my hero in a biography I wrote for DK Books. But the best thing is about your post is that I found out about the contest on "What is a Flame?" It just so happened that I addressed that very question with five hands-on experiments in a book I wrote in 1985 called Chemically Active! So I retyped the excerpt and sent it in. We shall see what happens.......
I had all kinds of ideas about what I was going to write about for today. Science and art. A term called The Beholder's Share. I was going to tell you about a great trip I had in Maine, where I spoke to librarians about writing non-fiction. I was going to show you a cool NPR story about the wind at sea looking like a Van Gogh sky. But then I opened up the New York Times Monday morning and saw this:
Please read it. I'll wait. I can't say it any better than that because all I want to do is scream. Loudly.
But I will say this, once again, as I've said many times and I think as I showed in CHARLES AND EMMA: Science and faith can co-exist. It does not have to be either or. But science is science and religion is religion. Evolution really happens. Smart theologians, religious people, clerics, rabbis, priests, ministers have NO PROBLEM WITH EVOLUTION. (I guess I am screaming.)
Our children deserve to be taught the truth in school. Period, the end.
Global warming really is happening. Smart politicians know that. Teaching our children the truth about global warming leaves open the possibility of saving our earth. Not teaching them the truth closes that possibility.
I hate conflict and controversy. I got very little of it, thank goodness, when Charles And Emma came out. I think because their relationship shows how science and religion can co-exist in peace and harmony with understanding. That's beautiful.
What's happening in Tennessee and elsewhere is not beautiful. It's UGLY. And stupid. I'm going to let Spencer Tracy say it for me: Inherit The Wind
13 Comments on Evolution, Shmevolution?, last added: 4/17/2012
A couple of months ago INK had a blog post consisting merely of the cover of a book - no supporting text. I was curious enough to check out the quality/reviews on the book and immediately bought it.
The book was this one on evolution: http://www.amazon.com/Billions-Years-Amazing-Changes-Evolution/dp/1590787234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334664622&sr=8-1
It's wonderfully illuminating! My five year old daughter and I are on the last chapter and will likely finish the book today. I can't tell who learned more; however, it's probably me! Let me tell you that learning the many facts that support evolution in their complex beauty does nothing but reinforce one's sense of the sacred -- in all of creation.
This book makes me feel more connected to our living earth and a living faith.
As a result of this book we also started the series of books by Hannah Bonner:
Thank you Deb! I read that Times piece on Monday and couldn't help shaking my head in dismay. I wrote a post once where I cited a recent study where science took a look at what makes us adhere to our beliefs in the face of facts that prove otherwise. It's called "Motivated reasoning." We tend to believe science when the facts corroborate what we already believe and discount it when there is conflict. Here's the link to the original article: http://cilc.org/calendar_event_detail.aspx?id=420&categoryid=2
Sad to say, that Tennessee is the second state to do this. Louisiana was first and I'm relieved I don't live in either place. It is unreal how politics and religion get swept up in things they don't belong in. Facts are facts.
Thanks for bringing this to the table, and for Emma and Charles as well. (Loved it) They had such a thorough and balanced insight, not to mention tolerance of others' ideas, and that was a century and a half ago. Perhaps social evolution is moving in the wrong direction?
On the adult side of things, I wish that every HS kid (and teacher) would read Bill Bryson's A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING- http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780767908184.
We are living in very challenging (and at times incomphensible) times. Don't be worn down or feel defeated by such nonsense; resist it here, in social gatherings, and at the polls.
Thanks everyone, so far, for your wonderful comments and book recommendations! As someone just wrote to me, we're fighting the good fight. I love that Galileo quote! Kirsten, how do you think C & E should have been categorized?
Deborah, I am just trying to figure out why some nonfiction is considered YA (especially when I love it equally as well as adult nonfiction). Is it that your book is shorter and uses simpler language therefore making it more accessible to young people? I can tell your research was as extensive as it would have been for an "adult" book. Thanks, Kirsten Larson
hmm, interesting & heated topic, but i dare suggest my opinion...
science is correct. evolution exists. proven by the fact that my 2nd son looks almost identical to my father, grandfather and 5 generations of great grandfathers before him...those are some strong genes.
religion is correct. why God chose to put the breathe of life into one 'ape' calling him "Adam" verses another animal is predicated upon the fact that God obeys the laws of science & universe. out of dust, and out of millions of years of waiting for the right set of perfect genes to call 'adam' and thus, man was created by God using divine power, patience, and yes, evolution.
its controversial for sure...that's why we as Christians believe we're descendants of Adam and not apes...because we know there was a divine religious event that changed the course of mankind from being lowly primates to sophisticated thinkers, doers, and superior beings. the lineage of Adam evolved into us. the lineage of other apes...not so lucky to be called 'human' & still primal creatures. then, again people claim to have seen a Sasquatch.
fear of evolution is fueled by people unwilling to accept science and religion can co-exist and work together to prove theories and ideas, dare I say "miracle"...hmm?
thanks for the great enlightening topic and thankful that evolution exists in many forms...even that of changing minds to understand and move forward.
here's to hoping the best for those TN kids! i look forward to reading 'charles & emma'
Kirsten, that's an interesting question. I wrote it for teenagers mostly because I love to write for kids. That's what I do. And because I also thought that this way I could tell the story I wanted to tell--the story of their marriage--without having to delve deeply into the history of the church, say, or to explain the science in greater detail. I wanted it to be a tight focus on their love story. I probably could have had it published by an adult publisher, but I chose to go this way. And it is a crossover. It probably has an equal number of adult readers, though I've never done a study. Perhaps this should be a subject of another I.N.K. post--how is writing nonfiction for kids different than (and not different than) writing it for adults.
I am no longer surprised at what small minded people do, but I am always delighted at the response of well-educated, open-minded, and dare I say "liberal" folks(in its true definition) to rise up and keep the flame burning. Science ain't dead yet - not even in Tenn.
according to you i'm a smart religious person...hurray! i feel better about talking evolution already. we teach our children evolution is a process that hasn't stopped, we are continually evolving both temporally and spiritually. such a great feeling to know that tomorrow is progress toward a brighter future based on choices we make today.
We humans, here on God's blue-green Earth, seem to have evolved in such a way that we get silly when we're scared, when we feel that things are going from bad to worse. Sometimes this fearful silliness takes the form of writing one's Congressmen & demanding that one's comforting notion of the 'old time religion' be written into Law.
Yesterday morning there was an article in the NY Times that touched on my former subject, Mary Sullivan. Although the article (in case the link doesn't work it's called
100 Years After a Murder, Questions About a Police Officer’s Guilt)
doesn't mention Mary, she had a minor roll in the case, though not in solving it (one of the many reasons I, sob, dropped the book). Seeing it there in the paper, I had a pang and so I decided to re-post this blog from early last year. If we weren't posting old blogs, I probably would have written an entire blog about my newly adopted dog, Ketzie. I guess I'm lucky because I am such a doting new parent I would have embarrassed myself by writing thousands of words about her and showing you a picture. OK. Since you asked. I'll show you a picture.
and one more just so you can see what she really looks like:
Now on to the "real" blog post, the repeat:
If it were up to me, you'd listen to this song while reading this post.
So. It's been a very, very long time since I broke up with a sweetheart, given that I've been married for almost 30 years. (In my culture, you get married at 11.) And I don't intend to ever break up with him. But there comes a time in every writer's life when she has to break up with a topic. Actually, many times. Usually the break-up comes early on in the project. At least for me. I work on something for a short time and realize that there's just no there there, or that it's not for me. Or someone or something else pulls at me, grabs my attention. ("Oh you over there, come hither...")
But sometimes, it seems, you go out with someone for a very long time before you realize he or she was not your bashert. This has just happened to me. It was a long relationship, but it was going nowhere. It just took me a very long time to realize that because I thought... I was sure...though I had niggling doubts...that I was in love.
Oh my that was painful - and funny - all at once. I would have surrendered at the point of pigeon poop, so I must salute you. I hope a snuggle with the adorable Ketzie will bring you some solace.
When Linda, our I.N.K. guru, gave me my day assignment and it was September 21, I knew I would have to write about my grandfather. You know how certain dates (and even, for some of us, telephone numbers) are written in your memory with indelible ink? September 21 was my Grandpa’s birthday. His phone number: 432-6202.
I hope you will indulge me and let me tell you about him. I think it relates to what we are all trying to do here.
My grandpa, Hyman Rockmaker, was a lawyer. He was the kind of lawyer who fought for the underdog, defended people for little money if he had to, and was known and loved all over town. You couldn’t walk down the street in Allentown with him without someone coming over to thank him, shake his hand, give him a hug and kiss. When I was a teenager (and a budding feminist) I was offended that he called all the women, “Honey.” Wasn’t that horribly sexist? I knew Gramps valued everyone; he didn’t have a sexist (or racist) bone in his body; this Honey thing didn’t make sense. After a while I realized that he called the men “Honey,” too. I pass this on for those of you who like Hy (and his granddaughter) have a hard time pulling up names. A useful tool, Honey.
Grandpa always rooted for the underdog, not just in his law practice, but in his life, and especially in sports. I was reminded of this by my cousin Monroe. We grew up watching Grandpa root for the Phillies, listening to the game on the radio, smoking his cigar. I still love the smell of cigar smoke (an anomaly, I know) and without realizing it, root for the underdog. Just recently, watching the US Open men’s final, I found myself rooting for Djokovic even though in a previous match I rooted against him. I didn’t know why. Nadal is cuter (this is a requirement, right?) and is even from Majorca, a place I love. When Monroe reminded me about Gramps and the underdog, I realized this is such a big part of who I am, I don't even think about it. When I pick subjects to write about I try to write about the underdog, the underappreciated, the unknown, or the untold story.
Grandpa loved to walk. He walked to and from work every day, probably a mile. Even into his eighties. This made a big impression on all of us. I walk everywhere I can, bringing a notebook with me because I get many of my book ideas, and solve many book problems, while I'm walking (also while in the shower). My brother, who is now closing in on the age at which I start to remember Gramps, walks a lot too. He actually walks to spin class, teaches it, and then walks back. Can you say, overachiever? Did that come from Grandpa, Phil?
Grandpa gave me the love of the underdog, the love of walking (so did my dad), the love of Halls cough drops and the smell of eucalyptus, and card games. He also gave me his ability to multitask. Back then we called it “ants in the pants.” Thankfully he didn’t give me the penchant for going through red lights because he didn’t have the patience to wait any more. (Yeah, it was fun being a passenger in his car.)
Grandpa's living room was lined with bookcases; it was my most frequented library growing up. There was always a book I wanted to read. (And also always a dish of candy.)
But the biggest thing he gave me were his last words, and what preceded them. My grandfather always made me feel like I could do anything, that I was the most special person in the world, or at least in his world, and since he had such a big world, that meant everything.
Grandpa wrote me letters when I was at camp, and each letter made me feel as if he was letting me in on something, that something being his greatness, his ability to live life with gusto, with honesty, with a mission to right wrongs. In person and in his letters he made me believe that I could conquer all. Every child should have someone who does that for her. And I say her because in
11 Comments on Attend to Your Work, last added: 9/24/2010
How wonderful that you have these precious memories of a very special man. You are right, "Attend you your work." can have many meanings. When I hear it, it reminds me of Jane Yolen's BIC--butt in chair.
What a heartfelt post. I am inclined to side with the underdog too, especially when a person or wildlife does not have the means to speak up for themselves.
I just absolutely loved this post. My parents have moved close to me, so they can be part of my daughters' lives, and I hope my daughters have the same connection to my father that you had to your grandfather. And by the way, my mother bought my daughters Charles and Emma for Christmas, and they loved it, although they wept as they read.
In championing the underdog, he helped create a family of overdogs. (If that's not a word, it should be.) "Attend to your work" is almost regal and the fact that it resonated with you at the tumultuous age of 18 is impressive. Thanks for sharing this.
Follow the Money by Loreen Leedy is being used in Vermont's statewide
financial literacy program.
http://bit.ly/bHwSTs
Artwork from several of Loreen Leedy's picture books will be included
in The Storymaker's Art, and exhibit of illustrations by eight artists
at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.
http://www.thestorymakersart.com/
Gretchen Woelfle will be on hand to sign books at Breakfast With the Authors, sponsored by the Santa Barbara County Education Office on October 9, in Santa Barbara, CA.
From Susan E. Goodman: My new Step into Reading book, Monster Trucks!, was just published September 28th by Random House. For my other writing news, check my blog post this month, on October 11th. Other news that doesn't really belong here...I'm going to Paris this month for two weeks!
Deborah Heiligman will be speaking at the Rutgers One on One Plus Conference, October 16. http://www.ruccl.org/One-on-One_Plus_Conference.html
and at the New York State English Teachers Conference October 21-22.
Vicki Cobb has been awarded a CILC Pinnacle Award Honorable Mention in recognition of outstanding videoconferencing programs. She was one of only three individuals (and the only author) who won either the Award or Honorable Mention. The overwhelming majority of recipients is museums, zoos and other educational institutions. The awards are based solely on a performance rating.The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (www.CILC.org), is the leading agency for providing videoconferencing services for education.
Vicki Cobb is now an official blogger for Education Update, a print and online FREE newspaper that reaches 100,000 educators. Check out the other bloggers. Her mission is to let the world know about us.
From Jan Greenberg: Thanks to Steve at WindingOak, my new website is launched. Please check it out. Jangreenbergsandrajordan.com October 1 and 3, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is performing Appalachian Spring with images from my new book Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring. My co-author Sandra Jordan, the illustrator Brian Floca, and editor Neal Porter are coming in and we are doing a panel discussion for the St. Louis Public Library on Saturday, October 2. A narration of the book with images and music will be performed by the St. Louis Symphony on November 10 and 16 for the Young People's Concerts.
Now Available
href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_g-Bp2wiurbI/TKiMXtWg5yI/AAAAAAAAAqQ/AUn40S4uG-s/s1600/martha.jpg">
Tanya Lee Stone's newest nonfiction book, The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie will launch soon and its first two reviews are both Stars! School Library Journal wrote, "The author maintains her signature research style and accessible informational voice." Kirkus: "Sibert Medalist Stone tantalizes." The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie is part biography--both of the doll and of her inventor, Ruth Handler--and part exploration of the cultural phenomenon that is Barbie.
0 Comments on I.N.K. News for October as of 1/1/1900
On Saturday I was thrilled to get up at the crack of dawn to attend the Rutgers One-on-One Plus conference for the second year in a row. (I really was thrilled. I'm a ridiculously early riser anyway, and besides, that's why coffee was invented.)
Last year was fabulous, and I expected this year to be the same. It was. For those who aren't familiar with the conference, attendees are paired with a mentor– an editor, agent, author or illustrator– who spends 45 minutes giving feedback on your work.
This year I met with a lovely author who offered many insightful suggestions for my picture book dummy... ones that I think will help take it to another level. Meeting her was just one of the delightful surprises of the day!
There was also a great panel of speakers– Deborah Sloan, Alvina Ling, and Katie Davis– who talked about the value of social networking and some of the ins and outs of Facebook and Twitter. Check out #rcclbuzz on Twitter if you want to learn more. (Dear Twitter, I do love you, but have a hard time keeping up!)
Oh! And I can't forget the 5-on-5 group, where groups of five mentees and mentors meet to discuss whatever burning questions about the industry anyone might have.
The grand finale of the day was keynote speaker, the awesome Deborah Heiligman. (She really is awesome, and not just because she handed out waterproof notebooks to everyone in the audience in case we find ideas in the shower! If you ever get a chance to hear her talk, do it.) Deborah was funny and inspiring. Instead of me trying to paraphrase what she said, here it is in her own words. And here's another take.
Good, good stuff. Heading off to my bubble now...
3 Comments on Rutgers One-on-One 2010, last added: 10/21/2010
That's so cool that you got to attend this conference again, Jennifer! I had such a great time last year and from for your description I can see it was another great event!
Thanks for all the links, especially to Deborah Heiligman's speech, that was fantastic!
Oh, I'm really looking forward to "Maggie and Oliver"!!
Thanks, Karen, and good luck to you too! I really think this is one of the best conferences out there.
Mônica, I was wondering if you would be there again! (Silly me, I should have just emailed you beforehand.) It was so great to meet last year. Hey, and I am looking forward to YOUR book! :-)
The other night my husband handed me a book we were both reading for our book group (TINKERS by Paul Harding; it’s amazing. Read it.). I looked at Jon’s bookmark and found this incisive and inflammatory quote from John McPhee:
“Nonfiction—what the hell, that just says, this is nongrapefruit we’re having this morning. It doesn’t mean anything. You had nongrapefruit for breakfast; thinkhow much you know about that breakfast.”
Think how much you know about that breakfast. I love it. And I also love the implicit question: what should we call this type of writing? Considering how much time we put into working on it, thinking about it, crafting it, caring about it, it’s just insulting that it should be NOT something. I posted the question on Facebook (Friend me; I have a literary salon going—I make a comment, leave to write or research for a day and come back to long conversations going on without me).
So I got a lot of comments; most people sharing my annoyance (One of my other heroes, Jane Yolen, said: “I have been complaining about this for over thirty years.”) and suggestions:
VERITAS (Richard Rhodes years ago tried to make a case for VERITY);
FACTION (But Jane says that’s already a term and means information that twists the truth, more fiction than fact, so that won’t work);
NARRATIVE NONFICTION (Thanks, Anita Silvey, and thanks, too for your great new website);
A lot of us call it narrative nonfiction, but it still has that NON problem;
Great post, Deborah. Thanks so much for sharing the link to the Columbia presentation. It was fascinating. They discussed many of the ideas and issues I grapple with all the time.
I've often thought about calling it "conceptual writing" because the structure you talk about is made of concepts that we decorate with facts. The structure is like the armature of a sculpture--it gives the basic form that allows us to create art. But of course, everything we write about is true. Great post, Deb. Sorry I missed that session with Jon.
Nonfiction does say something. To quote A.K. Rosenthal: "The word "nonfiction" beckoned me, with its self-assured first three letters. NON fiction. NON made-up. NON not true."
When I was thinking about what I would write for this post, after a month filled with family medical stuff, which included intense nerve pain for a month (me); a middle of the night dramatic collapse (husband) followed by 34 hours in a NYC Emergency Room (if only I wrote for grown-ups I'd have enough material for the rest of my life just from the set of rotating characters in the bed next to us), I decided I would take the easy way out and ask some teacher friends of mine to give me a list of books they wish someone would write.
[By the way, so you pay attention to the rest of my post and don't worry too much about us, as I write this, my husband is walking around the apartment strapped to a portable heart monitor, which I've named Halle Berry so he doesn't hate it so much, and which I am convinced will show as that his AFib was not a common occurrence; and my pain has, in the first words of ?John Stuart Mill? (someone else?), somewhat abated. I have every reason to believe we both are going to be o.k., though I must say the most commonly used word around our place lately is "vulnerable"...]
Anyway, thinking I'd let some teachers do the work for me (which in no way reflects my history with teachers, I swear), I started with my friend Jane Ribecky Geist, whom I've known since fourth grade. Jane teaches fifth grade in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where we both grew up. Her school is Union Terrace Elementary school. I visited there as an author many years ago and then volunteered in the reading lab, where I got to know the dedicated teachers and the circumstances of much of the student population. I have decided to start and stop with Jane today because what she wrote to me was so moving--and, incidentally, fit emotionally in a profound way with our last month (think vulnerability)--that I don't see the point in going farther right now. But I do hope teachers will chime in with their own wish lists and suggestions.
I asked Jane what was her wish list for nonfiction books for her kids, and here is what she said:
"I wish there was more nonfiction for kids on the unsung heroes in our history. I am just finishing Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I was telling my kids about it and they were enthralled! I even brought the book to school and selected sections for some of them to read. Any time we talk about history - and I mean truly talk about it, no Hallmark card renditions allowed - they don't want to stop! From the explorers to present day (thank you, Miss Laudenslager, for giving us background knowledge), there are people who made our nation what it is today, but they are not written about enough. [Note: Miss Laudenslager was our fifth grade teacher.] Spies, women who did their part, tales of defiance and survival - even the tricky strategies of the known people....when Washington decided to attack the Hessians (Valley Forge) and ignore the generally accepted policy of abstaining from battle on holidays...are excellent topics. My kids don't want to hear that everyone was smart, motivated, and morally sound. Let them know that these people may have been a lot like them. But they were passionate! And that is what allowed them to persevere - something kids in the Allentown School District must do everyday - continue to continue despite the hugely unfavorable conditions of their lives."
What Jane means about the "hugely unfavorable conditions of their lives" is this:
18 Comments on A Teacher's Wish List, last added: 1/21/2011
First, Deborah, I'm sorry to hear how rough these past weeks have been and am glad you all seem to be on the mend. (Halle Berry, clever.)
This is an important post, on at least two other levels: reminding us of kids our paths cross who don't get the love and cultural nourishment they should, and reminding our industry that we NEED nonfiction on subjects that have not been covered before in our formats (or ever!). Yes, this is partly self-serving because that's the kind of nonfiction I like to write, but I like to write it largely because it feels fresh. And if a topic feels that way to me, an adult who has read his fair share, wouldn't that go double for young people?
On various occasions I've reminded editors of this - when I sense hesitation due to unfamiliar material - yet there often seems to be a disconnect between what appeals to librarians (and kids) and what the publishers are willing to take a chance on.
As a children's librarian in a public library, I've come to realize that the books Jane wishes for NEED a Jane to bring them to children. When families come to the public library for biographies, I booktalk those unsung hero biographies like crazy, but they most frequently leave with Washington, Lincoln, Helen Keller, or Brittany Spears. (Don't worry. I'll keep on keepin' on.)
What knocks me out, greathearted w/ a brain to match, Deb, is that you spin out this moving & provocative posting w/ all the worries you've got going on. May they go & not come back. Your post leads me to wondering if, as the publishers' traditional role continues to shift & crumble, there will be more opportunities to bypass the gatekeepers and serve up more nutritious stories to young readers & their librarians. And allow me to add that in my post yesterday, I neglected to mention Rosalyn Schanzer's wonderful & vivid How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning. That Ben - now there's a boy born in hard times who made his way in the world.
So insightful, Deborah. Thanks for posting your teacher friend's wish list and for your encouragement to those of us in the NF field even while you are dealing with serious problems of your own. For your friend's class I suggest, among other bios by many great authors, my bios of Benjamin Banneker, Abigail Adams, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Biddy Mason, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Susan LaFlesche Picotte, Matthew Henson, Marian Anderson. These are, except for Abigail, minority men and women who helped make America great, written for just your friend's grade level, and spanning American history from 1776 through the Jim Crow era. Thanks again for your work.
Dear Deborah, Thank you so much for this post. I almost skipped reading it because I was so busy at work this morning, but I am glad I did. It gives me good ideas for how to craft a query letter for a biography of an unsung hero I am working on. In Peace, Caroline McAlister Author of Brave Donatella and the Jasmine Thief
There are THOUSANDS of great stories about unknown events in history and unfamous people who did great things. But for years now, (and just last weekend,) editors have told me that "we don't buy and can't sell books about people no one has heard of." Catch 23 or what???? Nevertheless, I am still writing books about unfamous people who did great things. Bit of a masochist, I guess.
Regarding Gretchen's comment, I have also tried very hard but without notable success to get my publishers excited about the amazing lives of the not-so-rich-and-famous. Unfortunately, this wonderful but sometimes frustrating business is all tied directly to the publisher's bottom line and to the limits of the school curriculum.
I'm also extremely familiar with schools like Jane's, and I have noticed that picture books written for multiple grade levels work wonders with student like hers.
I like books by Steve Sheinkin for this reason. He writes in an irreverent tone that makes historical figures seem a bit more real.
Also, Kathleen Krull's "The Lives of..." books are great for showing the humanity of heros. They don't always get positive reviews from readers (ie: on Amazon). Clearly some people like the cleaned up stories better! One book from her series that might help your friend is "Lives of the Presidents: Fame, Shame, and What the Neighbors Thought".
For your friend that teaches 4th grade and is looking for a range of books on different history and science topics, maybe this website I've been creating over the last year will help:
http://www.the-best-childrens-books.org/
There are sections specific to science and history in the navigation at right.
As for books on unsung heros, I'm with everyone else. They are so needed.
Great post. I'm new to your site, but have just bookmarked your page to check back often!
Jane and I would like to thank you for your comments. We really appreciate it. And keep them and any suggestions for books coming. Feel free to email me (you can do it through my web site). And thanks to everyone who sent get well wishes. I really appreciate that, too. --Deborah
My students are about the same age as Jane's....I teach 6th graders in both social studies & science. what is particularly unique about my class' needs is this....most books are written for much younger children or for older. It's terribly difficult to find books that are for this upper group.
If I use picture books with this age group (and you can find wonderful books that aren't too young), then they need lots to keep them reading. It puts a huge strain on the library...because they have do interlibrary loaning to keep up with the kids' demands. A picture like Tracking Trash is a perfect example of a great picture book written for my kids. It's not too simple; and it's not too hard; and it can't be read in a single sitting.
The other thing that is a problem is that most non-fiction science books are about planets or animals or life science. No one wants to write much about earth science. If they do, it's rare and hard to find. believe me...we have more than enough titles about planets, space and life-science stuff. I don't know why but people seem to ignore how compelling books about volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, exploring the plates of the earth, and so on can be if you just find the hook.
We also need stories about how these unknown scientists/engineers came to be. The Giants of Science are some of the kids' favorite titles but they are super famous and there are already tons of books about Galileo, Einstein, Newton and so on.
The last category I don't authors have fully explored is historical fiction for this age group. Rick Riordan has done a ton for our age kids...but the reading level is lower than their ability and the stories get pretty predictable if you've read more than one. Contrast that with a book like Crispen...full of history and still compelling. It's also pretty easy to find books for kids related to either the middle ages or ancient Egypt...but what about all the ancient civilizations that are so cool. For example, right now we're studying ancient China. They are fascinating by things like the practice of cricket keeping or how they built the houses so high during the ancient times. Somewhere in all this is a terrific story. Think about the parts of the world that will be important in their lifetimes...and it isn't anything Europe. It will be India, China and the Middle East. Our kids need to understand these parts of the world so much better so that when the headlines breakout with all the violence & distrust; they'll have some understanding of why and those cultures apart from acts of aggression. Imagine the kids surprise when we studied the major religions of the world and they saw that Jerusalem was the holy city for all three religions of that area and there is much to unite those peoples. They just thought they should/have/will always be moral enemies. Or how flooding in Pakistan, Australia and Brazil are being fueled by the same forces...but it so dramatically impacts those populations in much different ways.
These are the topics that will make social studies & science come alive for this age kid. The message isn't diluted to factoids, but put in the context of how it impacts their world.
I encourage you to write for this age group. They are ignored, in my opinion. When they create book awards, they're too young to really read many of the YA type books and too old for others. Another examples of the hard spot it is to be a tween!!!!
Thanks to everyone for so many positive comments and suggestions! I have a lot of browsing to do - can't wait to start! Thanks mostly to Deb for keeping me in her loop. To all NF writers...keep on keepin' on! I love what you do.
In my somewhat new Monday slot, more of my posts fall on holidays (duh!) and I have just let them pass. Last month, for example, Valentine’s Day came and went, but my heart wasn't in it.
Today, however, I’d like to celebrate this week’s unofficial holiday that, in my opinion, deserves to become official--the onset of Daylight Saving Time (DST). What an emotionally lifting gift—especially to New Englanders who have been battling the suicidal impulses that accompany a 4:30 sunset. For months we have tried to keep our spirits up as the light inched back a minute at a time. Then PRESTO CHANGO! In just one day, arbitrary magic multiplies the jump times 60. We get a whole new hour of light—and life becomes brighter in every way. If only Zoloft worked so well.
As nonfiction writers we are obligated to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, right? What about the whole truth, though? In this case, I would have to admit that DST causes increased danger of traffic and pedestrian accidents during its first week because of sleep cycle disruption. It was never created to help the farmers or reinstated more recently to save energy. In fact, farmers hate it and many experts believe it increases energy costs: electricity for air conditioning and over $100 million a year for the airlines.
Why did this idea gain purchase? Some British golfer in 1907 realized that if one hour of sunlight was switched from the sunrise side to sunset, he’d have time to get to the back nine. In fact, when the 1986 Congress debated the issue of extending it into March, the golf lobby went to town. According to Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, the golf industry estimated the extension of DST would increase their revenues by 400 million 1986 dollars, the barbecue industry over $100 million. In other words, if you give Americans the chance to go outside at any time, they will spend money.
Telling the whole truth about DST is not a horror. An ironic example of one of America’s worst traits, perhaps, but not a deal-killer. In the unlikely event that I ever wrote a book about DST, I’d “out” its origins with relish.
But what about other times, when telling the whole truth in our books for younger children is a lot more painful? Then how far do we go? I just attended a conference on sustainable energy this week where everyone had already accepted the devastating long range consequences of climate change as inevitable. Nobody was talking about getting better gas mileage or "clean coal." The focus was on how to think about reconfiguring communities in the Brave New World. I'm not considering a book about this subject either; but how do you give kids hope and this kind of information at the same time?
When I wrote See How They Run: Campaign Dreams, Election Schemes, and the Race to the White Hous
4 Comments on The Whole Truth, last added: 3/15/2011
I am sad that I woke up this morning with the sun and it was 7:30. I don't want to have to set an alarm! Can't wait to meet you, Susan! Correction on the date: March 15, the Ides of March.. tomorrow... is our panel.
15-year-old son got up today grumbling (well, he grumbles every day when he gets up but today was a record breaker). I can't wait to tell him he owes DST and the evil sun in his eyes to a golfer! Watch out Tiger! As for worrying over what to include or not include in a book, my answer is that it's a constant issue with me. When I did Inside the Alamo one bit of research suggested that Davy Crockett may have escaped the Alamo dressed as a woman. My original editor on the project and I spent a lot of time chuckling over including a Crockett cross-dressing chapter to see if anyone would notice. Of course, we never did, but I have a feeling some folk these days would just to get attention. Have fun in Boston.
Susan, I didn't catch the mistake. Someone else did. I am a lousy proofreader! Can't wait to see you tonight. And Jim, I just finished reading the latest Horn Book issue. I love your quotes in Sue Bartoletti's article. "Lunatic overdrive gear. "
Before I start my blog post, a quick announcement: Tonight, March 15, at 7:30 I will be on a panel at Boston College with Susan Goodman (who INKed yesterday) and Lorree Griffen Burns talking about NARRATIVE NON-FICTION, called TELL ME A STORY AND MAKE IT TRUE. If you are in the area, please come! Here's the link.
Now back to our regular programming...
I’ve written a bazillion nonfiction picture books. (Yes, that’s accurate, a bazillion.) And a few fiction picture books, too, by the way.
I have illustrated nary a one. I tell the kids who ask me at school visits that if I did my own illustrations no one would buy my books. Ha ha. It's so true. I also have not sung in public since I was the only girl not to make the chorus in sixth grade. (Would it have been that hard to put me in there, in the back? Really?) Wait, this isn’t my therapy session? Sorry. But my point is this: When I write nonfiction picture books they are either illustrated with photographs or by the deft hand of someone else. Right now I am eagerly awaiting sketches from a brilliant illustrator for my book about a mathematician. I know she is going to bring much more to the book than I ever could, or could ever imagine.
Yes, I am in awe of illustrators and forever grateful to those who illustrate my books. I got to wondering recently what it would be like to create a book from start to finish as others here on I.N.K. do, (I bow down to you who do) and just as I was thinking about that, a lovely new book landed on my desk. A book that I wish I had written, and yes, illustrated. Meadowlands by Thomas Yezerski. (FSG)
Tom is a friend of mine and I asked him if he would share his process with us so I could live vicariously. I asked him which came first, the words or the pictures.
My illustration process usually begins with the words. Actually, it begins before that. It begins with my being interested in something. In this case, it started with getting lost somewhe
3 Comments on What I Can't Do (And Tom Yezerski Can), last added: 3/16/2011
So how do you get photographs in your books? Do you have to buy them from a stock place? Or does your publisher provide them upon publication? I've completed a book about animals and am wondering what my next step is as far as the photos in it.
As with all illustrations you work out photos with the publisher--unless you yourself are a professional photographer. Arrangements vary. Sometimes you are given a budget; sometimes photo costs come out of your advance. With my Holidays Around The World series National Geographic paid for the photos (and their brilliant photo editor Lori Epstein found them) but that meant my advance and royalties were arranged as with any other picture book. I am sure other INKers can tell you other ways it is done.--DH
This is a terrific article. Thanks for writing it, Deb. As you know, I'm in exactly the same boat as you are/ have been. When I do school visits, I tell the kids that I can't even draw a good stick figure--and that's truly not an exaggeration (the only thing I do worse than draw is sing!--oh, oK, and maybe cook . . .) Anyhow, for that very reason I am always careful to share lots of slides for both the picture books and the novels that are from the illustrator. As you made clear so well here, they do as much research and prep work as we do--and the need to be interested--dare I say, OBSESSED-- with one's subject matter remains a requirement for both the writer and the artist. Jan: I've done a series of books in which I used my own photographer--but that pairing was pre-approved by the publisher (now a Holt imprint) and she signed a contract just as I did before we started. We were hired for the series based ona book proposal that included sample chapters and sample photographs. I've also wrtten Y/A biographies (for Chelsea House & Eerdmans) for which the publishers provided all of the photos and illustrations and I really had nothing to do with that part in those cases. These days, though, there is so much more available on-line, that I imagine you could submit some stock photos as examples and then let them determine if they want you to do more of that--or if they like your text and would prefer to have their own art dept. provide photos. Hope that helps . . .
We all know that an author should never say yes to a school visit without first knowing the terms. But last summer Cynthia Ruptic, the lower school librarian at the Rabat American School [RAS] emailed me. “Come to Rabat for two weeks. We’ll have a great time.”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Usually these international trips last a week, at least that’s what I’ve been told as I had never done one before. But Cynthia and the upper school librarian, Lora Wagner, thought that since I write for children and young adults, and since I’m a writer and photographer, two weeks would be a better fit. Two weeks in Morocco? How could I resist.
Lora and Cynthia
That was last summer. As the time for my visit neared, North Africa exploded in a sea of Facebook revolution. My good friend, Liz Levy, was trapped in Egypt along with Bruce Coville and his wife. Trouble in country after country inched closer to the border of Morocco, and the conflicts grew more violent. Was this the right time to talk about nonfiction and photography. Would the students concentrate on anything other than what was happening on their continent? Was it safe? The school principal, Kathy Morabet, emailed, “Come! Morocco is peaceful.”
And so …. My two weeks in Rabat were intense and wonderful. Before I left, though, Cynthia emailed a program that freaked me out by its Cecil B. DeMille, Technicolor-coded complexity. There was a two-page spreadsheet, chock-a-block filled with classes, photography workshops, after-school club meetings, auditorium presentations, and a teacher presentation. Class visits were from Pre K to 10th Grade. I immediately came down with a sore throat that lasted until I arrived.
In addition, Cynthia and Lora set up a series of half hour meetings with each teacher before I was to meet their class. Yikes! When would there be time to do all that? Those meetings turned out to be a godsend. They gave me the sense of what the teachers were doing and how my prepared programs could be adapted to reinforce their teaching. Class projects ranged from growing silk worms in a shoebox to scribes in Ancient Egypt. Science, math, and ancient history are not exactly a clear fit with my work as a contemporary nonfiction author. And yet, when we put our heads together we found ways to bridge the gap.
So when Alice Mendoza’s kindergarten class went to work on the RAS Storypath Park, the students photographed the tops of the school’s palm trees and attached prints to clay models that represented the trunks.
Photo by Alice Mendoza.
4 Comments on Travelblog: A School Visit, Moroccan Style, last added: 4/11/2011
I still don't know how you fit all that into two weeks! It all sounds fabulous for you and the students. Don't you love the international school experience? (I went to West Africa last fall.)
I bet you are getting inundated with requests for your contact information for this school. What a dream school visit! Though you sure did work hard! What lucky kids and teachers they were to have you there, Susan. And what a beautiful example of reaching across boundaries and religious and cultural differences to form life-long bonds.
I am taking this day to talk about something related to my post last month: art. This month it's about covers, and specifically the covers of two of my books--Celebrate Passover and Celebrate Easter. First of all let me just say this is not some sneaky way of getting you to buy my books. Since Passover has already begun and Easter is just days away, it's too late for this year. If I were a truly savvy marketer I would have written this post a month ago. But I'm not that savvy. Not even slightly. This came about because I took out the books to bring them to the family seder (o.k., just one of the books, guess which one?) and remembered that they changed the covers before they put them in paperback. Can you guess why?
Above is the cover of the hardcover edition of my Passover book.
Below is the cover of the paperback edition, out about a year later:
Why the change?
Here's a hint, by way of my book about Easter. Hardcover:
And the paperback:
5 Comments on A Book By Any Cover?, last added: 4/20/2011
Hi Deb -- Great post! It also occurs to me that the cover changes might have been made to try and reach a more general market. Even folks like me who do not celebrate Passover will have seen matzah in the grocery store (ie. the new cover ties to my experience) and folks like me who do not celebrate Easter in any religious sense still love the Easter Bunny.
Wonderful post, Deborah, and wonderful covers – with four exceptions: you name should be MUCH bigger and in BOLD. I often wonder and sometimes argue about cover changes from hardback to paper. Your explanation makes perfect sense. As for the future of covers, let's hope some things don't change. Yours look fabulous on this screen. Happy holiday!
Hi Deborah! Just wondering if you were able to publish directly with National Geographic, or was your book placed with them by an agent? Thank you for your post...it was enlightening!
My younger son is graduating from college today so while you read this I will be trying womanfully not to cry too hard in public. I will probably not be succeeding, so wish for me, please, that he does not witness my blubbering. It's all I can ask for.
That said, I do have a life beyond hankies and graduations and B and his brother, I swear I do...and in that life I am a writer and …
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Lately people have been asking me to recommend good books to read about writing narrative nonfiction. I have a few personal favorite books about writing that I read years ago and dip into now and again. I couldn’t find all of them (I tend to lend them out), but here a few of my favorites among the many I have looked at (or at least bought) over the years:
If You want to Write by Brenda Uleand
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
What If? by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter
Writing on Both Sides of the Brain by Henriette Anne Klauser
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Becoming a Writer by Dorthea Brande
I would say that out of all of these books the one that I go back to most often is Writing On Both Sides of the Brain because Klauser taught me something I need to be reminded of often. She says we have a critic inside our brains (no, really?) and that critic should be given her due, but not while you are in the creative process of writing a first draft. During that time you kick out the critic (send her to a relative's house) and tell her you will let her back in later. Then you write happily and uninterruptedly without a nagging voice telling you what's wrong with what you're doing. Later you invite that critic back (notice that this is by invitation). The critic is very helpful during your editing phase, but should be sent away again when you need to tap into the creative, UNcritical voice again. It does work that way for me: creative brain needed (right side) then analytical brain (left side) called in to help. Knowing this process makes it easier for me to silence the critic when she gets in the way. This simple piece of wisdom has saved me, my sanity, and my books many, many times.
I also go back quite often to What If for Bernay's and Painter's great writing exercises. Although these writing exercises are meant for fiction writers primarily, they are useful for nonfiction writers as well, especially those of us who want to use the techniques of fiction in our nonfiction: scene, character, plot
6 Comments on A Writer's Stack O'books, last added: 5/19/2011
Thanks to your (and your husband) for these book recommendations. Some of these I already know and love. I am going to run out to the library to get my grubby hands on the others.
By the way… mini whole wheat crackers, cheddar cheese, and a hot cup of really good coffee.
Thank you for this post, Deb! I really need to kick my inner critic out of the house--out of the state, the country, the continent!--and this is great advice.
Congratulations to the graduate and proud parents.
Roasted asparagus, green beans, left-over chicken and rice, and a big fat brownie with chocolate frosting.
Hooray for graduation, and for new things (for everyone).
I know this isn't exactly secret wisdom, but ON WRITING by Stephen King is pretty inspirational. A little bit nuts-and-bolts, a little bit memoir, a little bit straight talk. I think much of what he says is true for every kind of writing. And if not true, at least interesting to think about. (He has a great metaphor for writing first drafts that has something to do with desperately paddling a leaky boat to dry land.)
A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to tag along on a mini book tour of my husband's. They were publishing editions of his latest book in The Netherlands and Bulgaria and his publishers asked him to come give talks in three places: Amsterdam; Gent, Belgium; and Sofia, Bulgaria. I'd always wanted to visit Amsterdam. Belgium sounded nice, but when he said Bulgaria, I said, "I'm coming!" When else would I have a chance to go there?
I can't tell you about the whole trip in a short piece (though I would love to), but I will tell you about one thing from each place.
First, the thing that "blew my mind" in Amsterdam. No, not that. I was too jet-lagged. The Anne Frank house. I knew I would have to go there. I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was in sixth grade. I'll never forget the moment I finished it, at a family gathering at my grandparents' apartment. I adored everyone in that apartment, and yet when I closed the book, in hysterical tears, I looked at my grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles, my older cousins, and I thought: I hate you. I hated them why? Because they never told me. My younger son had the same reaction when he first learned about the Holocaust in Sunday School. Of course this is not about not being told, it's about learning it for the first time for yourself. Experiencing the horrors of the world unfiltered in some way. That happened to me again in the museum that is in Anne Frank's hideout. Walking through the rooms where Anne and her family hid out, reading Anne's words, looking at photographs of Anne and her family, and the others, touching things Anne might have touched, I was deeply moved. Walking through with a crowd of other people from all over the world, all of us silent, was an emotional experience. Thinking of Anne experiencing first (and last) love in those rooms, was almost unbearable. Reading her gorgeous words, her genius that was snuffed out by evil, I was near tears. But it wasn't until the end that I was walloped.
The people at that museum know how to tell a story.
When you get to the end, there are videos of people talking not about Anne, but about her sister Margot. Saying things such as (not an exact quote), "I don't know why they focused on Anne. It was Margot who was special, brilliant..." At first I was upset because this felt like a betrayal of Anne. Then I realized with a thunk: It's all about Margot, isn't it? Because of course Margot was special. Of course her friends would think it was her story that should be told. And how many friends of the millions upon millions of people who were killed in Germany and Poland and etc. by Hitler and co, and in Russia and Lithuania by Stalin and co, and etc. etc. etc. would think that it was their friend whose story should be told? You get to the end of Anne's story and you are not allowed to feel grief about just her life. You have to multiply it by an unimaginable number. And that is, of course the beauty of Anne's story--it is particular and it is universal. But hearing about Margot makes the whole thing overwhelming. Why didn't anyone ever tell me about MARGOT?
6 Comments on Inspiration in Amsterdam and Sofia, last added: 6/21/2011
Loved this post, Deb -- especially your observation that the most moving stories are both particular and universal. So very true! I can't wait to read what you've been inspired to write!
What a wonderful post, Deborah. I love the reminder that the life of one person can be unique and representative at the same time. Its an important lesson for writers, and especially nonfiction writers.
The trip sounds pretty terrific, too. Can't wait to see the photographs.
Fascinating stuff on Bulgaria,Deb. You have alsoreminded me of my visit and impressions at the Anne Frank House.
As for Belgium, OK, there IS the chocolate, but also its where master flower painter Pierre Joseph Redoute was born, in St Hubert, in the Ardennes Forest. Spent several delightful days there and in Brussels doing research for the book! ;~)
Wow, Deborah, I have no words to tell you how grateful I am for your post and all words you wrote about Bulgaria, me and my collegues. It was really a privilege to publish Jonathan's book and to have guests like you both! This was one of the most inspiring days of my life! I have no patience to read your book! Greetings from Sofia, which is not so scary place as you describe it - we just don't had the time to show you it's beauties :)
Hristo--It was not scary really! I was just trying to describe the contrast between you and your idealism, and the "other stuff" that does tend to stand out more. It's what we call here a contrast gainer!
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t’s what I’ve been told as I had never done one before. But Cynthia and the upper school librarian, Lora Wagner, thought that since I write for children and young adults, and since I’m a writer and photographer, two weeks would be a better fit. Two weeks in Morocco? How could I resist.
6 Comments on Inspiration in Amsterdam and Sofia, last added: 6/21/2011
New movies release on DVD on Tuesday too, & when I worked at a video store that question haunted me too. As a reference librarian myself, I will commit myself to the search for a more definitive answer. Good luck in your hunt for the truth!
I hope you will find out! I'm hoping one answer will rise to the top as THE answer. Of course it does seem to be changing... hoping a publisher will weigh in about whether it will start being more fluid.
I read an article last year that said it's because of the shipping and setting up thing; if a book is released on a Monday, for example, the bookstore would be unpacking the boxes and setting the book out on its release day instead of having it already displayed on that date. I don't know why not Wednesday or another day, except that Tuesday's still early in the week.
First of all, I must point out that this is not universally the case. As I mentioned on Twitter: Only RH and Macmillan have strict Tuesday laydown dates for all titles. Other publishers like Harper and Penguin for example only have strict dates for a few select titles - generally "big" frontlist titles. Some publishers, like Scholastic for example, are the first of the month, whatever day of the week that may be. And some, like Lerner, assign a "pub date" but the real fact is, the book might show up in stores a month early, or just WHENEVER IT COMES.
So why have dates at all, and why are the dates so often Tuesday? I think it is a combo of reasons:
* For big books, they are timing media to coincide with the release week of the book.
* They want to be sure that all retailers have time to get the book in stock, received and on the shelf on the day and before said media hits and before the weekend when the most people shop.
* a laydown date helps ensure a level playing field. It's unfair if a NY bookstore has a book before a Calfornia store, or if Amazon has it for sale before physical bookstores, or whatever -- if NOBODY can sell it before that date, no one retailer will have an advantage over another (theoretically)
* Many NYT reporting stores collate their information on Monday, and can report anytime until Tuesday morning. IF you think your book has a chance of listing, you want to maximize the amount of time it is for sale that week, without the possibility of it bleeding into the week before.
just to throw a little dirt on the fire here, while the PUBLIC sees the book reviews on sunday, booksellers see those reviews as early as the wednesday before (i do at least); the book review is mailed early so we can read the reviews and order accordingly in time for them to be in the store after the review is published.
any bookseller who is ordering on a monday isn't getting that book before thursday.
books didn't always have a tuesday laydown (just as they didn't used to have prices printed on them) but these things solidified in the chains a little over a dozen years ago and may have been in part an effort to make sure they had an agreed upon target date to a national release.
but why tuesday? i think it's just one of those things that evolved. movies didn't always come out on fridays...
Thanks everyone! I think we are closer to the why... now I still wonder is it going to become more and more fluid as publishing evolves even more.
Stephanie Anderson, aka Bookavore, sent this:
http://www.blurbisaverb.com/2011/08/marketing-guru-carl-lennertz-on-why.html